Forever, You Said
by Persephone Kore
Summary: Aliya Jenskot considers Cable and Domino but in this story, it hurts.


_Disclaimer: Characters and universe are property of Marvel Comics. No infringement nor any financial or material profit is intended._

Author's Note: This is a similar situation but something of an emotional flipside as regards my earlier story "Forever." It does not necessarily qualify as sequel, prequel, or alternate timeline, but could in fact be any of the above.

**Forever, You Said  
by Persephone**

You promised me.

You promised me love and loyalty and faithfulness until death and beyond.

You promised you would always be mine, and I promised I would always be yours.

None of this flimsy "Until death do us part" business the ancients used. No. Our love would last after death.

Oh, and how it has. 

Forever, you said, and I believed you.

It hurts, Nathan. It hurts that you found someone else. It hurts to see you together when I can never hold you again, never speak with you or kiss your mouth at the corners until you smile or whisper in your ear -- or cling in your arms after a battle as we gave each other what comfort could be given when part of our family lay half-burned and dead on the field -- or plan strategy and later cover each other against the enemy, with a terrible fierce exhilaration that the horror of the fight never fully wiped away.

Not until the day I died. The pain of being ripped open and the regret at leaving you and Tyler wiped out almost everything else, but I remember thinking about that feeling and missing it. It was an exhilaration at still being alive, you see. 

I think you've lost it now. I wouldn't have wanted my death to do _that_ to you -- though perhaps it's just as well. Perhaps the feeling really is as ignoble as some say; it's for certain not a really noble one. This cold, dead purpose you fight with now, however, doesn't seem that much better. 

You find the feeling again every now and then, though. You find it fighting alongside _her_, because, if you'd only admit it, doing that makes you feel glad to be alive. It is, after all, also a protective feeling, though if I'd ever said that in life someone would have laughed. 

Maybe I should have, during one of those times we didn't laugh enough. Too late now, of course, so there's no point in regrets.

I'm not going to say it. I don't feel like saying it, and I'm not living -- or dying -- it now, because I'm railing at something that's already happened, at a situation I'm not doing anything to change.

Forever, you said.

Is this forever, Nathan? Holding her and giving _her_ that special look, is this forever?

It hurts, _Dayspring_. Dawn of a new hope.

Hope. I know she blames you for my dying. Silly of her, but right now I don't begrudge it.

I don't blame you for my death. I blame you for moving past it in the way you have. I wanted you to mourn decently and then get on with your life until we could join each other again, not sink yourself in emotional mire and then long years later fall head over heels for the beautiful little girl. 

I knew it. I knew you would. Did you know that? When I brought you forward in time to your own past, and she showed up, I saw the way she looked at you. 

And still, after that, I said "Forever!" in our wedding vows, and listened to you say it, and I believed you. Perhaps I had tucked the memory away, or had it done.

Perhaps we should have used the old words. Those, at least, you held to. Unfortunately that was not the vow you made.

I kept my vow, Dayspring. I didn't abandon you with my death. I'm still here waiting for you. I really don't think this is the normal afterlife, though I suppose if it is we might have an explanation on how many people keep coming back from the dead in your current timeframe. It feels as if it ought to be easy to step back across.

It isn't, of course. There's the question of a body, of some sort, or at least a usable energy pattern. There's some kind of barrier -- I suppose I'm a ghost, just not one who can interact cohesively with anything. I don't like it. I don't like waiting for you, knowing you've found a replacement for me who can do all I ever did for you, seeing you with her, seeing the light in your eyes for someone else. I don't like knowing there will be someone you will be as reluctant to leave as I was to leave you.

I should be happy for you, shouldn't I? Shouldn't I? You're living; you've found someone new to love. It's selfish to be displeased that you've found someone else to be happy with, isn't it? It's certainly against the philosophy I've always been taught, of accepting reality _before_ you start fighting it. 

It's foolish of me to be resentful.

It's selfish of me to be jealous. 

But I am.

You still remember, don't you? Of course you do. You remember every moment we had together and every moment we were apart, every battle and every day we fought each other and every day we didn't fight at all. However rare THOSE were. 

You remember our wedding day, and what you said. You still feel guilty sometimes. What, you thought I couldn't read your mind anymore? Of course I can. You just can't really hear me too well. You feel guilty about breaking your oath to me, but you go right ahead and do it anyway, consoling yourself with the fact that I'm dead and, after all, I loved you and would want you to be happy, not bury your emotions in despair and set a stone of determination over the muck. 

I loved you. I still love you now, even when I'm almost angry enough to tear at you with my bare nails for deserting my memory this way. 

You still remember me. Yes. You still have nightmares in which you dream the day I died all over again in the deathly clear, vivid detail of a telepath's memory, that strange and sometimes cruel little quirk that goes along with the power.

Guess what, Nathan? My memory is as good as yours. I still dream that day too, and feel it all over again. It doesn't hurt nearly as much as watching you with her.

I suppose the simple solution would be not to look, but I can't seem to manage that. 

Come to think of it, I still can't believe you mistook the shapeshifter Tyler sent out for her, especially to the extent you did. However did you manage it?

No, I won't speak one more word of blame to you on Tyler, not on his behalf at least. You did everything, I think, that you could do for him under the circumstances, and while I would that there had been more, there wasn't.

I still dream -- if ghosts can dream, I do; relive sounds even less probable -- I still dream, I say, the day I lost him and lost my life and, it seems, lost you. 

It doesn't hurt as much as being awake and seeing what you do now.

No, no, I won't touch your dreams. They have enough to do as it is, and you have enough to do to live with them. So live. You don't need more nightmares. I won't touch them tonight.

I tell myself that almost every night. Perhaps I will never do it; something in me shrinks away from hurting you so even now. I could tell myself I would never do it.

Such long-term promises are dangerous, though. They're very hard to keep. Wouldn't you say so?

Besides, I'm actually having far too much fun with someone else's dreams. Stryfe. He can't block me out, because he doesn't know I'm there and, in fact, I'm not precisely "there." I might not even be in a real place, but it doesn't matter; I can see just as well wherever I like. Or as ill. 

I'm very, very good at coming up with scenarios for dreams. I've made him wake in a cold sweat or floating just below the ceiling... I almost got a scream out of him once. Oddly enough, that one wasn't even a disaster (fantasy, in my case) -- it was a very simple one where I took on the form of a stray dream-object -- or it took on mine -- and... talked to him. 

You'd think after coming back from the dead himself he'd not be so unnerved by dreaming about someone who's dead. Or perhaps you wouldn't. 

Having fun with Stryfe. Never thought I'd say that. Oddly amusing.

Now, don't YOU get jealous.

As if you were going to.

I wonder if I could pull off something like the trick your mother used. Of course, she didn't do it on purpose -- that Nate Grey boy who _actually_ did it didn't do it on purpose either. That doesn't necessarily mean Stryfe couldn't -- or wouldn't.

It would be so ironic if I could somehow persuade or goad him to give me a body. If an enemy brought me back to life. 

There is, of course, no way I'd even consider attempting it as long as I don't know how Madelyne got out of being dependent on the boy -- and still more importantly, whether I could reasonably expect to duplicate the feat quickly and safely. 

Not a likely course of action at all. Still, it has its attractions. 

I hate it here. I hate this state of being, next to the world but not quite in it. Next to your world, waiting for you.

Waiting forever, if I must.

I know you deserve to be able to move on. I know I have no real right to expect you to be true to me while my body is ashes in the thirty-ninth century and you prowl the late twentieth. I know that forever didn't have to mean the marriage held once one of us died; I even know that, if it comes to that and the vow should hold until the end of time, technically you haven't made it yet -- and I, in fact, am not even dead, but will be unborn for centuries yet! 

So perhaps forever doesn't count in reverse. 

That... really doesn't make me feel any better.

Maybe I'll find my way back to life, and rock the foundations of your new relationship. Or perhaps if I did, you'd hardly notice. 

Maybe I'll go on without you sometime. Break the other half of a shattered promise.

Most likely, I'll simply go away, take out a little malice and temper on Stryfe, who deserves it, and wait until something else happens. Something I can watch without tearing apart inside, something besides her climbing into the spot you warmed up for her on the bed -- and into your arms.

Then I'll go on waiting for you.

Forever, you said.


End file.
